Forearm tattoo of the Queen is just the start of the laughs

EMERGING comic Thomas Jaspers is a little caught up with the Queen and her family.

He reckons this is a rich field of dreams for a comic looking for material and he need look no further than his forearm for his muse.

“I had a gay midlife crisis at 27, which is just like a heterosexual midlife crisis just 20 years earlier,” Jaspers jokes.

“My show is about why I got a tattoo of the Queen on my arm and why the royal family is pretty fun.”

Casting his mind back all that way to when he was 22, Jaspers concedes: “While I probably didn’t expect to be brandishing the Queen on my arm, I have always had a soft spot for her as I grew up in an elderly nursing home, so I used to hang out with the old ladies after school.

“We had a big portrait of the Queen hanging in the nursing home. And that portrait now hangs in my bedroom. I developed a fondness for the royal family when I was really little.”

Talking about why the royals make comedy fodder, Jaspers has a long list of reasons.

“It is just a treasure trove for a comedian. You have Queen Elizabeth who by government standards is a binge drinker. Prince Philip just has so many royal gaffs,” he says.

“At a preview of a James Bond film, when told Madonna would be singing the theme tune, he asked if anyone had any earplugs. He also asked Cate Blanchett if she could fix his DVD player.

“Because the royal family talks about their Commonwealth’s views, not their personal views, we only ever hear stories as they leak out and the Queen Mum loved gay men,” he adds, indicating there are some rich and touching stories about that that are worth telling.

Jaspers says he got into comedy after dabbling in other performance arts: “I sort of put on little plays at school and short films in high school and community radio and the serious stuff of performing other people’s scripts was a bit of a downer.

“I don’t like being told what to do,” he adds with a giggle.

“I like the lighter stuff rather than darker. Nursing homes — well there are a bit of sad morbid times and I talk about this in in the show. I love a good night of observational humour, but if you are going to tell a story there is never really one without some sad bits. You have to touch on the more poignant moments as well, even in comedy,” he explains.

Jaspers credits the start of his stand-up career via his “discovery” on Twitter that led him to being a warm up for Nath Valvo’s show about the hook up app Grindr.